This question suggests someone who hasn't used a photo organizing program like digikam, darkroom, or lightroom. Also gimp has been lacking in non-destructive and 16 bit editing, though they may have changed in unstable versions? But I haven't intended this thread to be about gimp or comparisons to. I use both gimp and the other programs I mentioned above, as well as photoshop.

[edit] on second thought maybe lightzone isn't so much like digikam, darkroom, lightroom but more just a stand alone editor. I don't know that much about it.. why I wanted to give it a try.

It's written in java.
Gerard._________________To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

thanks Gerard! Is this a good thing or a bad thing as far as installing and using on Gentoo.. that it is in java? It looks like it would be more trouble than it is worth according to the document:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/java.xml, but curious if you have thoughts on it. I'm also going to assume that because it is in java, there is no way to do an ebuild because of the environment it requires.

I'd consider that enough not to install it.
I d/led it and browsed the files.
It should be possible to install it outside of portage.
Gerard._________________To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

My wife and I have been big fans of LightZone for a long time. We run it in an amd64 environment using (I think)
app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-java.

It is not a replacement for any other photo editor but it has a crucial place in our photographic "work flow"
For us the key features are: (and 2 is the most important.):
(1) 16 bit non destructive editing of many file types including the *.NEF's from our Nikon cameras.
(2) Best and most intuitive user interface that we have seen for dividing photos into different zones whose density and colour values are edited to different
settings in a what you see is what you get manner. Reviewers used to claim that it was inspired by the manner is which Ensel Adams used to edit is photos..

This is a wonderful and crucial addition to our work flow. We Use LightZone 2.4, which is still available for free download. 2.4 uses small *.lzn files to describe the edits that you have made,
and so does not alter the original. The last time that we tried later versions, they embedded the changes into a new copy of the origina. We viewed this as being wasteful of space.

LightZone lacks many standard features, but offers others that we have seen no where else.

Added in Edit: I don't think that an ebuild is helpful here. We just downloaded it and installed (by copying it) into ~/local/bin .All that you need do set your use 32bit java-vm
or (in the case of 2.4 at least), edit ~/local/bin/LightZone
to set the java-vm.

Code:

#! /bin/sh

# Uncomment the following line to override the JVM search sequence
INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME_OVERRIDE=/opt/emul-linux-x86-java-1.6.0.45